Launch external app

Launch external app

Does anyone know of a way to launch an external app? I've searched and tried it with PHP but PHP isn't working the way it should I guess. I want to execute this command:

cd C:/Program Files (x86)/Songbird && songbird.exe -play

or I have a bat file or I have my PATH variable pointing to a folder where I'm holding some bat files so in the command line I can type "test_play" and it will launch "test_play.bat" just fine but finding a way to do it in an Air app.